Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your LJ. Other people (including me) can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

Spongebob SquarepantsThis show has become ubiquitous. And I mean everywhere in the world. You’d be hard pressed to go anywhere on the planet and not find someone who knows Spongebob. I love the show for the same reason I loved the old Bugs Bunny cartoons as a kid, the same reason I loved MST3K and now Rifftrax. It’s innovative. It’s fun. It’s totally insane. The characters and stories don’t get old and don’t repeat themselves. There are definitely times when I’m watching and think, “Whatever the writers are on, I want some.” And that’s the mark of good television for me.

Red DwarfI haven’t actually watched Red Dwarf in quite a while but I think it’s on Netflix streaming so I may have to again. I love good science fiction and I love good humor and Red Dwarf has both. At this point I would have to repeat what I just said about Spongebob so just scroll up and read that again.

Dr. DementoBarret Eugene Hansen, aka Dr. Demento, had a radio show that I started listening to when I was a kid in the 70s. The show lasted in syndication until the early 90s. In the days before the internet, syndicated radio shows were portable entertainment. Dr. Demento earned his nickname after playing a song called Transfusion by a band called Nervous Norvus on his show. Go here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nervous+norvus+transfusion and you will see why. He made a career of playing unusual music. You can listen to old shows and his current podcast here: http://www.drdemento.com/

sharpiesgal knows me well enough to have picked topics that allow me to show off my personal weirdness, something that I am wont to do. Nothing shows this off more than my love of Dr. Demento.

Fractal GraphicsEven my reason for getting into math is sort of weird. As most of you know I studied math. I have a Master’s Degree in Abstract Algebra and Algebraic Topology. What got me interested in studying math back when I started college in 1983 was what at that time was a new study called chaos theory. It wasn’t yet an accepted branch of mathematics. Most of the older mathematicians considered it a computer trick. Now, almost 30 years later, it is the core of almost every scientific discipline.

The concept is deceptively simple. Small changes in initial conditions can lead to drastic changes down the road. One of the off-shoots of this concept is what happens if you take a simple function in the complex plane and iterate it. Basically, plug in a value, take the result and plug it back in, repeat. Drastically different things happen depending on your starting value. You can assign color values to each possibilities and end up with pictures like this: http://barahalphoto.net/fractal/frac010.jpg Back in the 80s and early 90s you needed a supercomputer to generate these sort of pictures. Now, there’s an app for that :)

Walking DeadSo, I’ve also revealed myself to be a comic book junkie. What I haven’t made clear before is that I’m not a superhero comic book junkie. I love horror comics. And no one has done more for the genre that Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. Together they created the Walking Dead in 2003. I’ve been reading since the beginning. The thing that makes this particular comic stand out for me is the running storyline and characters that have depth and background. Though I don’t buy the monthly issues anymore, I do get the graphic novels and keep up that way.